An Impossible Reflection
by kaworuFanboy
Summary: Dumbledore allows himself some weakness and gazes at the Mirror of Erised. He gets a shock when it shows him not one but two impossible reflections of desire.  DumbledorexGrindewald, kind of yaoi.


I don't own any of the Harry Potter-verse except my spot in Pottermore (haha!). Portrayals of DumbledorexGrindewald but not explicit or anything. Also thanks to Robina Snyder for pointing out a mistake I made about Grindewald (so it's fixed now)!

He sent Harry off, back to his bed in Gryffindor, and watched affectionately as the eleven year old boy full of destiny and sorrow made his way back in wonderment. Professor Dumbledore stayed back in the room to gaze at the mirror of Erised for just a while longer, a weak self-allowance for his old age.

He knew he was deliberately ignoring the advice he'd just barely given to the young Potter, to not spend too much time living in dreams and the past, especially with something as subtly dangerous as the mirror of Erised. Looking upon the reflection of your heart for too long would be adverse to one's health, and enable the viewer to escape reality and waste away in fantasy.

Albus really truly _had_ seen himself with a pair of woolen socks in the enchanted mirror-glass, but he'd left out an element so as to not further confuse poor Harry, already puzzled and enthralled at the prospect of seeing his parents once again. He yawned and furrowed his eyebrows before returning his eyes to the mirror. The moonlit stone and crisp late night air faded from his attention but he knew fully well that what he saw could never be real, and that he couldn't even be inside the scene like he could with a pensieve. No matter how hard lovelorn and regret and a myriad of other emotions panged at his heart, even at his old and respectable age, he wouldn't give in to the flat image before him.

There stood Gellert Grindewald, by Albus's side. They were old and wrinkly and smiling crackpot-old-fool smiles at each other. How the mirror aged Gellert to what had to be the present-when Albus hadn't seen him for years-was baffling. But still, with leathery yet papery hands, Gellert handed Albus a pair of badly hand-knit woolen socks of a dreadfully dull color tied together with a Christmas colored ribbon. Mirror-Albus laughed heartily and took his gift. They shared a chaste, geriatric sort of kiss on the lips, looked fondly into each other's eyes and chuckled and embraced.

The real Albus averted his eyes, knowing from past experience that the reflection would show himself and Gellert trying on the socks. It was heart-warmingly domestic, but so depressing in the simple fact that there was no possible way for it to happen or have happened. He shook his head free of creeping thoughts concerning his most dear, once best friend. Despite what he'd done and what had transpired between them, Albus couldn't throw him out of his heart.

Deciding to get back to bed himself, Albus leaned down and reached out to the drapery on the ground so as to cover the mirror back up. He couldn't help but wish he'd asked Harry to have done that, seeing as a spritely eleven year old wouldn't have arthritis. Albus grabbed a hold of the dense cloth and moved to throw it over the mirror until a streak of gold and auburn flashed from the top of the glass to the bottom. He paused, astonished. The mirror of Erised now showed a different reflection of his heart. He hadn't known the mirror could do that. He slipped into simple human curiosity and gasped softly when he understood what he saw.

The gold was silky, lustrous, and flowed like molten ambrosia behind the young man it was attached to. The auburn belonged to young Albus and wasn't nearly as wonderful as young Gellert's. The young pair of men were fooling around in a swimming hole, presumably out of Hogwarts for the summer holiday. It could be that they were completely finished with Hogwarts too, he couldn't quite tell. Well, he amended, it was fiction so there wouldn't be an exact age to the players in the scene. After all, they'd never gone swimming together. The question of "do I even recollect having such a desire?" popped up but Albus couldn't take his eyes off the silent film of sorts.

The young mirror-Albus, with something of a goatee in the making, plunged into the water after his glowing Adonis of a friend. They had great fun splashing at each other and performing charms on the water to cleverly pull pranks on the other lad. It seemed to last an eternity, this innocent fun, but eventually the young Albus climbed out of the water and laid down on the grass to dry off and catch his breath. The sun was still high in the sky and the weather looked comfortably warm. It was so peaceful he fell asleep. Gellert, still in the water, rested against one bank and watched Albus nap for a minute. A lazy breeze blew by momentarily and Gellert sloshed himself up and out of the swimming hole, swimming trunks clinging low on his hips thanks to the density of water and gravity. He strode slowly to where Albus lay , his gait confident and seductive.

He went down on all fours and crawled over Albus, his sopping wet locks reaching and waking Albus before his lips could. Their kiss was anything but chaste, in clear opposition to the previous reflection with the socks. It was much slower, longer, and savory, a product of young and intense love laden with lust.

The real Albus coughed and closed his eyes for a moment. The manifestation of a love that could never be for too many reasons made his heart ache with fresh longing and despair. He knew he was going to be ensnared if he watched any longer. He inhaled and exhaled as deeply as he could to calm himself, and performed a quick spell on the drapery, so that after a certain amount of time it would fall over the mirror and he could call it quits and return to bed, like he'd originally planned.

He continued to stand and watch what turned out to be the remainder of the mirror's show. In all honesty it wasn't the most pornographic thing he'd seen throughout his many years (he pushed away the unimportant memories of youth and sexual curiosity), but it had to be the most erotic. Probably due in part to the intense mutual love the mirror-boys showed for each other. After they had fallen asleep in the grass, clinging to each other like pups to their mother, the scenario began to repeat. Soon the drapery fell back down though, and Albus drew together his resolve and forced his rickety knees to take him back to his office and from there to his bed chamber. He wouldn't be tempted to see the new vision again, for the mirror of Erised would be moved in the next several days. He dressed for bed and laid himself down, allowing himself to shed a tear over the impossibilities in his life before falling into the nursery-maid arms of sleep.


End file.
